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Road to Vegas and 2014 Objectives. Cumulative RTV Total = £3,220
Good luck Thoich.
You're making it look really easy at the moment achieving your goal. Off course it isn't easy though and well done for knuckling down and getting the results.
Guess it's good having friends to talk to/ motivate you during this. I noticed the other day that Benc is doing fantastically well so far this year.
Enjoy Vegas. (Not jealous at all) 
Comments
Hi all,
2013 ended badly for me from a poker point of view. I experienced the worst downswing of my short lived poker career from July to September multitabling DYM's. This, coupled with a failed attempt to bink a £160 live event at Dusk Till Dawn in October and I was pretty much ready to give up with poker for the foreseeable future. I didn't play at all from October until the end of the year, and too be honest, I didn't really miss it.
'Road to Vegas' formation
It wasn't until early January when a friend of mine, (benc on here) told me that him and Nickd49931 were planning on hitting the poker hard in 2014 and grinding HUSNG's. Soon after this we were joined by duonross and suddenly my motivation for poker had sky rocketed. I think there are a number of reasons for this:
1. I had never really put too much time into my heads up game, so I relished the idea of a new challenge.
2. When I was grinding DYM's, all my poker friends were playing cash or HU, so I never had anyone to discuss game-specific strategy with. This group provided a great platform for me to learn and develop my game.
3. This also gave me a great way to keep in touch with my friends while I was at university. Due to this project we pretty much talk every day, whereas that may not have been the case if we were not all embarking on this journey together.
We all set ourselves volume targets, and some set other targets, like not tilting onto £42 hypers after a bad session (benc). After a few days grinding we also came up with an overriding objective of earning enough money through poker to pay for a holiday to Las Vegas, and we came up with a (very original) name for our project, 'Road to Vegas' (RTV).
Personal Objectives and Overview of Year to Date
January Objective: Play 1000 x £2.10 Turbo HUSNGs with ROI of +6%
Given my situation as a poor university student still reeling from a ~£500 downswing, I was only able to stomach a £50 deposit on Sky, so I committed to only playing low stakes. Revision and Exmas got in the way a little bit, but I found a session of grinding provided a nice break from revision and allowed me to be more focused with studying afterwards.
My new found motivation helped me reach 1000 games on Jan 27th:
Games: 1000
Profit: £229
ROI: 11%
(Including 10% C4P rakeback)
Safe to say I was happy with how the month went. After a few small MTT losses my bankroll at the end of the 1000 games was at £260. Similar success was also experienced by the other RTV members, but I will let them tell you about that in their own time.
February Objective: The plan for February is simple for me.. Exactly the same as January but at the £5.25 level.
So far so good for February. At first I struggled to cope with the money increase of the swings but thankfully I went on a good run early on so I have never been below the bankroll I started the month with. Currently on 7% ROI after 400 games despite being on a 9 game losing streak, so although I am feeling pretty tilted right now, things could be worse.
Anyway, I have rambled on long enough, time to get back to some poker! Thanks for reading, and I'll be updating with progress towards my February goal soon.
Road to Vegas 2014 group total: £3,220 (+199)
(Last updated 15/02/2013)
I won't add too much to what thoich said, basically since i was last posting i have got a job at a school so am able to get decent grinds in post work and at weekends etc managed to clear 1k games as well last month starting at 5s and moving up to 10s, hoping to carry on getting in good volume, my target at the start of the year was 6-8% roi after 1k games managed to surpass that, am incorporating alot of hypers into my games now so am looking at anything 6%+ as a realistic roi to attain over a large sample of 5k games.
I would definitely reccomend Teddybloats post on Nash if you have yet to read it and play HU, should be link below.
https://www.skypoker.com/secure/poker/sky_lobby?action=show_static&page=poker_community_forums&plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a57795ac2-1793-4377-b4cf-e124b0f555f4Forum%3afe44ed5b-a5bb-4eec-b300-cc40d1b3a210Discussion%3a002fb7c5-c43c-48c3-9df0-6e6d86588851&plckFindPostKey=Cat:57795ac2-1793-4377-b4cf-e124b0f555f4Forum:fe44ed5b-a5bb-4eec-b300-cc40d1b3a210Discussion:002fb7c5-c43c-48c3-9df0-6e6d86588851Post:c6b9cc96-e33c-46ed-8508-9aab20dca019
My Hu year to date:
01/01/2014-02/11/2014 Games: 1,278 Av Prof: £0.84 Av Stake: £6.72 Roi: 10.6% Total Profit:£1,068
The 1st of January came along and 'RTV' was formed, my history on sky was a pretty mixed bag. I felt like I had the capabilities to be a winning player but had never put in the volume (I had played a bit but had never truely understood long term expectations and was more in the game for the short term buzz of winning/losing a bit of money). So the goal of 1000 games @ 5.25 was set. My previous 2 years on sky I think I had only just played over 1000 games in all formats so this was a pretty big target. I was finishing a work placement on the 17th of January so I had time on my side and set about the goal.
The start of the month felt as if it had gone fairly ok, was getting home from work playing tired so probably not all that optimally. We had some good discussions in our group chat with the rest of the team which kept morale high and occasionally even threw in some helpful strategy. Work finished and I was able to really get in the big 40/50 game days which for me mainly single tabling felt a lot.
A heater set in one night where I felt like i was running insanely good and told myself I'd play until I next lost a game as it was getting quite late. 2 hours later and my 16 game winning streak finally came to an end. The next morning I got back on the grind and yet again found myself running very well, winning a good chunk of flips an getting paid with my good hands. Once my session finished up i totalled up some stats an realised I had won 29 of my last 32 games, pretty sick.
Anyway the month was gone in a flash and my Hu target was met. Given throughout the month the ROI target was around the 8% mark I was more than happy with how I finished. Will try attach the graph to the bottom. Will hopefully give a mid month Feb update soon - If anyone is interested.
Unique thread, 3 of you totally bossing it.
Get dunonross to post, and keep it updated.
Awesome start to the year x3, keep it up!
Quality induce!
It was the endless pinging of thoich, nickd49931 and bencs study group page that was giving me a daily headache that inspired me to get on board with this RTV aim.
However as much as i wanted to get on the HU grind, my finances are at an all time low due to recently graduating and failing to find full-time work (barring a brief stint at Sainsburys as a Christmas temp)... so i decided to play the daily 300gtd freerolls, i managed to build a £25 bankroll from these and got very over excited and instantly hit the 5.25 hu speeds, quickly getting up to £50, before plummeting to bankruptcy... for about the hundredth time in my life i made the decision to give up poker for at least a couple of months.
2 days later... Sainsburys informed me they wouldn't be renweing my contract... What was my first thought? obviously poker, and a reluctant deposit of £25 pound was made. I made a commitment to myself to play 500 2.10 speed HU games with the aim of achieving a 10% roi. I made the other RTV members promise to abuse me if they saw me tilt onto a 5.25 (which i have been known to do in the past).
To try and cut this mediocre story short... i ended up getting to 350 2.10 hu speed games, my broll was around £120. At this point i spent the day with Benc before our weekly football match, and he suggested playing roll ups to try build my roll quicker... upon this advice i started playingg 2's until i made £5 then would play a 5.25, then 10 and then 21 (where i stop as my testicles are not yet big enough).. this worked well and within 48 hours had a £250 roll.
I then decided to cut my 2.10 hu speed volume target short... and hit the 5.25 turbo's (an RTV favourite)... this first went pretty awful and i have a £60 pound downswing... but my roll was still decent enough to carry on and after some decent volume the results starting changing.
17 day story HU... volume:645 ROI:8.9% Profit: £440
....with a couple of token £20ish cashes in MTT's also.
I'm sure ill be back in another two weeks with a sob story about how i got sooo unlucky and am bankrupt when really I'm probably just on a heater... but lets hope not.
#longliveRTV
Keep crushing those Sit and gos
Thoich Blog #2 - Life and Poker
So the downswing I talked about at the end of my first post continued for another couple of sessions. My bankroll fell from about £450 to £380 and suddenly, for the first time since the beginning of RTV, my enthusiasm for the grind started to fade slightly. I decided to put poker to the back of my mind and take a few days off.
Time for a break
The need for time off coincided nicely with some gigs I had tickets for. The first gig was Frank Turner in Nottingham. We had a brilliant night, despite the fact that we managed to get on the wrong train home and had to shell out an extra £30 for a taxi back to Loughborough.
A couple of days later and it was off to Birmingham to see The 1975. This was the gig I was most looking forward to, but looking back I think the Frank Turner one was slightly better. Maybe the fact that a vokda coke was £6.20 had something to do with it...
After the gig me and my friend ended up in a bar having the kind of deep intellectual discussion only possible after one to many vodka's. I don't remember many of the topics we discussed, but one of the things I do remember was that she thought I was wasting my time playing poker.
I didn't think much of it at the time, but while I was in the shower the next day, contemplating life, I started to give it a bit more thought. I built my defence case around the fact that 'wasted time' would suggest I do not enjoy the time I spend playing poker, and this is definitely not the case. Furthermore, I barely watch any television, play video games, or sit mindlessly procrastinating on Facebook. If you compare the time I spend playing poker to the time some people spend on these activities, I would bet there's not that much of a difference. Finally... It's not like I am a social hermit. If I spent 12 hours every day locked in my room playing poker I would accept her point, but at the moment I think I have a pretty healthy poker/social life/uni work balance.
Back with a Bang
I ended my short poker hiatus on Friday, and just as I was defending myself, a pretty accurate way to describe my Friday was 12 hours spent locked in my room playing poker. Actually, that’s a lie... I did go to the shop to get a pizza mid-afternoon.
I started the session rather anxious as I was still well aware of my current downswing situation; another losing session today would have been pretty demoralising. Thankfully that was not the case. I put together a good run and finished the session on £440. Panic Over.
To treat myself for solid days work, I decided to enter the £200 GTD tournament for £5.50. A few hours later I find myself heads up with a 2:1 chip lead. Unfortunately I could not convert this to a first place, but I was pretty content with £60 for second.
For about 6 or 7 hands after the break my opponent was still away, which led to an interesting debate between me Nick and Ben. Is it bad ethics to blind someone down in a situation like this? This also comes up a lot in HUSNGs, how many people would actually wait if their opponent disconnected mid-game, or is it standard to blind them down in this spot? Would be very interested to hear people's thoughts on this.
Anyway, just when I though my day couldn't get much better, I remembered that my exam results had just been released. I averaged 64%, a comfortable 2:1. I actually thought I had done pretty poorly in my exams, so this result made me very happy.
All things considered, it's been a very good few days
RTV CHALLENGE
Have suggested to the the others for grinding motivation/friendly competition that we have a bet over who can make £500 the quickest from 12 tonight so we can track via scope, winner will get all there drinks paid for the next time we go out after the bet is complete.
Rules: Play any amount of games at any stakes but profit will only be counted from HU games.
Officially starts at midnight..duonross will no doubt be multitabling £210's by 00.05 if anyone wants to get involved feel free to post.
DYM Pro
As Jan went much better than expected, I was apprehensive about the start of the month. Will the hunger still be there? Is 1000 games possible again? How can I cope with cruising at nearly 16% ROI for the month to a sudden downswing?
Well inevitably a downswing occured. Variance hit me in the face and it was a bit sore. Yet I'm still standing and I've managed to ride it out as well as repair the damage and then some. It was about a 20 BI downswing over a few days, probably not that much considering the nature of HU poker but it felt brutal at the time.
What got me out of this downswing I felt was taking some time off and just looking at new ideas and keep your mind ticking over. You don't need to overhaul your game by any means but it can't hurt looking at a few tweaks and double checking you aren't doing anything too hurrendously.
Anyway with a little over half the month gone I don't think 1000 games is achievable - however I do hope i can make it to the 3000 point mark given some higher buy in sessions mixed in with some cash maybe. Will post my graph for HU month to date so far as you can see its been quite swingy, hopefully i can come out at the end with a decent ROI once again.
I like a flutter on the football so I thought It might be an idea to jot down some bets as I lose track so often:
Gareth Barry Motm - 14/1
Seamus Coleman Motm - 16/1
Daniel Agger to be booked anytime - 6/1 -- Lets hope he starts
Good start to the day with Seamus Coleman getting Motm, £17 win in 2k Winter freeroll and Agger starts for Liverpool. Gl at tables guys
Things started off slow and it felt as if benc had it in the bag after taking an early lead - however Sunday and today have been pretty insane days and earlier I just passed the £500 mark since the start date which was the 16th of Feb. Managed to find a nice rhythm of two tabling - one £10 turbo coupled with one £5 hyper. I can autopilot the hyper and focus on the turbo while still getting good volume in. Safe to say I ran pretty good as well with an ROI for the week around 20%. Will post a picture of the stats at the bottom and give a summary of the month over the weekend.
Very much looking forward to a night out with my drinks on the RTV team. Especially looking forward to duonross getting the first round in.
Finally would like to say congrats to sky for an extremely successful weekend at DTD. Even though I did not attend just railing the threads on here was great entertainment and congrats to everyone who cashed and took part.
Overall figure for all 4 of us was £1087 from 2165 games (husng only)
1) Nickd49931: £515
2) Ben: £343
3) Duonross: £197
4) Thoich: £37.90
Nice to see everyone turn a profit.
Team total for all games fromt he start of the year stands at : £4036
Just HUsngs: £3800
Last month went well HUSNG Games:1046 Profit: £528 roi: 5.6%. Having transitioned to playing alot more hypers and a bit of a brutal spell early on i was very pleased to turn a decent profit. Aside from poker our 7 aside team (which duonross is a part of and nickd and thoich have had cameos with) took down the league title staying unbeaten and west ham decided to turn into a hybrid of barcelona and real madrid so all in all quite a pleasing month.
Aims
This month i'm going for priority for the first time, with the promo that is running giving me an extra bit of motivation. Mainly i'll be grinding £10 hypers with the odd shot here and there if i see someone i think is worth playing at 21s, two-three tabling post work (worked out i need to average 64 games a day average at £10.50 to make it). I'm hoping it will be doable, i think the biggest challenge will be grinding out the volume when dealing with the horrid losing streaks you can go through when grinding alot of hypers but i'm suitably rolled and seem to be dealing with the mental challenge alot better this year possibly because i have an income from work and am not a poor student so money in my bankroll isn't nessecarily money i see as being able to make a huge difference. Preferably i'll hit somewhere around the 3-4% roi mark which added to the rakeback would be a good month.
Having seen how successful the ukpc was i will definitely be looking into going to the next spt and getting involved, still never even been to a casino, my brother lives 5 minutes away from aspers so planning some kind of big night during the easter break.
Anyone interested in HU go to husng.com and take advantage of all the free content they offer, the videos are really good and having never paid for coaching or videos have to say they have helped me when i've had a few doubts about my own game.
Right back to the grind, will try update with how the prio grind is going in the near future.
Team HU accumulated total 02/03/2014: £4260
Nickd49931: £1629
Benc: £1574
Thoich:£550
Duonross:£507
Celebrating with a bottle of the finest bucks fizz post winning the league..
Well played Nickd.
I'd ask how the 'free' night out went, but if you maximised your free drink equity, you probably have no idea.
At the beggining of last month i decided to attempt to hit priority for the first ever time, mainly playing hypers, having done well and got in alot of volume since the start of the year this felt like an attainable but challenging goal at the stakes i play especially whilst balancing work life/social life. My only concern at the start of the month was whether i would be able to deal mentally with the swings of playing so many hypers and the inevitable -10bi and +10bi downswings day in day out without getting carried away in both a positive or negative manner. The month started very well i heatered for the first week which set me up nicely for the rest of the month, it's alot easier to deal with long breakeven stretches/downswings when you already have the profit behind you. I began mainly multitabling 10s then climbed and played alot of 21's but would drop up and down based on how i felt i was playing, the edge i had and how a session was going. I hit priority on the final day of the month and was really pleased to have hit that milestone for the first time, added to some cash from the promos throughout the month and prio rakeback it was probably my best ever month of poker.
03/01/2014-03/31/2014 Games: 1,471 Average Profit: £0.84 Average stake: £12.95 ROI: 5.6% Total profit: £1,242.
I have barely played this week, but now have a two week break off work (easter) so hoping to still get some decent volume in for the month probably sticking to £10 hypers. Profits are currently going towards living costs/ saving for the possibility of travelling through asia but i am ensuring i always have 100bi for £10 hypers and will probably stick to them as my main game for the timebeing. Vegas is still very much in my thinking for the future though. I have yet to go aspers but plan on going with the rest of the group at some point, still yet to play in a casino am hoping an spt is announced for the coming months as would definitely be interested in doing that this time around.
Gl all on the grinds anyone interested in HU and likes to discuss strategy or whatever pm me and can add on fb or skype always good to hear other opinions and ideas.